Longus’ Imitation: Mimēsis in the Education of Daphnis and Chloe
FRITZ-GREGOR HERRMANN Swansea University
I
The concept of mimēsis as ‘imitation’ and ‘representation’ is firmly estab- lished in literary criticism from Classical antiquity to the present day.1 Against the background of that tradition, this chapter attempts to see what use Longus makes of the concept of mimēsis in his pastoral novel Daphnis and Chloe. As is to be expected, the problem has received ample attention in modern interpretations of the novel.2 The emphasis, though, in discussions of ————— 1 I adduce just two examples, chosen for their common-sense lack of originality. Abrams 1999, 123, s.v. ‘Imitation’, writes: ‘Imitation. In literary criticism the word imitation has two frequent but diverse applications: (1) to define the nature of literature and the other arts, and (2) to indicate the relation of one literary work to another literary work which served as its model.’ The Greek term mimēsis is introduced in the subsequent explication. Against this twofold distinction, we find the following categorisation in Shipley 1970, 201, s.v. ‘mimesis’: ‘mimesis (Gr., imitation, q.v.) (1) Considered by many a basic prin- ciple in the creation of art, (a) as representation of nature (opp. symbolism); (b) as emula- tion of earlier work, esp. of the Gr. and Roman authors (opp. spontaneity, originality). (2) The imitation of another’s idiosyncrasies or ways of speech, dress, behaviour. (3) The second mode of presentation of a story; see Narrator; cf. Irony III.’ In his separate lemma ‘imitation’, Shipley (158–159) emphasises inter alia the absence of any direct repercus- sions of the views expounded in Plato’s Republic or Aristotle’s Physics or Poetics in the Greco-Roman tradition from Isocrates through Cicero and Horace to Longinus, a tradi- tion that saw imitation or mimēsis as the praiseworthy emulation of earlier literary mod- els. These brief definitions, as well as more discursive treatments of the topic (cf. esp. Ferrari 1989), have now been subsumed and as such superseded in the magisterial study by Halliwell (2002), who covers the history of the concept of mimēsis from Homer to the beginning of the twenty-first century, with a particular focus on Platonic and post- Platonic views in antiquity. 2 Succinct and, to some extent, complementary treatments of the topic can be found in Hunter 1983, 19–20, and in Morgan 2004, 14–15, under the heading of ‘nature and art’; there is also the complex essay by Zeitlin 1990.
Philosophical Presences, 205–229 206 FRITZ-GREGOR HERRMANN mimēsis is, notwithstanding a general awareness of the wider contexts in which the concept plays a part, usually on ‘aesthetics’ and ‘the literary’. But while the literary-cum-aesthetical significance of mimēsis cannot and should not be denied or diminished, appreciation of these aspects of mimēsis should not be at the expense of what was quite possibly the original context in which mimēsis became instrumental, the context of education.
II
This is of obvious importance in a novel one of whose main themes, if not the main theme, is education. For while it is erotic education that gives struc- ture to the four books of Daphnis and Chloe,3 the narrator of the novel in- cludes description of many different aspects of the general education of the youth and the maiden. With regard to this education, it is remarkable that we find in Longus, without obtrusive explicitness, the various modes of educa- tion which were discussed from the earliest point of self-conscious social awareness among the Greeks, i.e. the second half of the fifth century. In what is extant, these modes of education are represented in exemplary fash- ion in the fourth-century Socratic dialogues of Plato. The three main types of education that can be distinguished are (1) education by instruction; (2) edu- cation by and through nature; and (3) education through mimēsis.4 An example of (1) education by instruction is the story told to Daphnis and Chloe by Philetas, the story that teaches them Love’s name, the name of Erōs.5 The old man Philetas appears and then, ‘sitting close by them, he spake thus …’.6 Once Philetas’ account of his encounter with Erōs is com- pleted, we read:
Much they were delighted, just as having heard a story (mython), not an account (logon), and they enquired what ever this Eros is (ti esti pote ho Erōs), whether a child or a bird, and what his power is (ti dynatai).7
————— 3 Cf. e.g. Zeitlin 1990; Morgan 2004, 10–11. 4 It should be stated at the outset that, in Longus, this tripartite scheme cuts across the bipartite division φύσιϛ-τέχνη, or nature-craft/skill/art (on which see Teske 1991; cf. also Morgan 2004, 14–15), which is itself a descendent of the earlier fifth-century opposition of φύσιϛ (nature), and νόμοϛ (custom and law). 5 Longus 2, 3–7. 6 Ibid. 2,3,2. 7 Ibid. 2,7,1.
. LONGUS’ IMITATION 207
Philetas provides a brief account in answer to this double question, at the end of which the narrator reports:
Now, Philetas, having educated (paideusas) them with regard to that much (or: with regard to such great things), departed …8
The word paideuō (‘educate’) clearly labels this episode as educational at the point at which the story (mythos) and the explanation are completed.9 The educated reader realises that in addition to the potential and actual intertex- tualities of the mythos with Theocritus, Bion, and, beyond them, Theocritus’ ‘teacher’, the Hellenistic poet Philetas, the structure of 2,3–7 itself consti- tutes another instance of intertextuality: a mythos followed by a non-mythic explanation, in the context of education, is exactly what the ‘old’ Protagoras offers his young listeners in Plato’s dialogue Protagoras. At 320b, Prota- goras offers his audience a choice between mythos and logos; he then him- self chooses the form of mythos for his epideixis, his exposition, because it seems to be more pleasant and more pleasing (chariesteron), an adjective that goes with the delight experienced by Daphnis and Chloe; but once the myth is over, Protagoras provides an non-mythic explication and explana- tion; he does not indicate the change in mode of exposition at this stage, but at 324d he does declare that he ‘now no longer relate[s] a myth (mythos) but an account (logos)’. From a structural point of view, the parallel of the epi- sode in Longus with the passage in Plato’s Protagoras is thus privileged over the other Platonic parallels adduced by Morgan.10 The prominence of the Protagoras passage as the intended intertext is reinforced by the fact that the context provided by that dialogue alone is that of education; this cannot be said to the same extent of the other Platonic passages in which mythos and logos are contrasted.11 Platonic, on the other hand, is also the question ‘what ever Eros is’, in which echoes Socrates’ frequent ‘ti pot’ esti’ (‘what (ever) is …?’) ques- tions. In the Protagoras and in the Meno, this question asks for the nature of aretē, (‘excellence’); in the Laches, for the nature of andreia, (‘courage’); in the Charmides, Socrates suggests that if Charmides is sōphrōn (‘modest’), and has sōphrosynē he must know ‘what (hoti) modesty is and of what sort (hopoion) it is’. In Longus, this question of what – not who – Eros is is fol-
————— 8 Ibid. 2,8,1. 9 Cf. Morgan 1997, 183. 10 Morgan 2004, 182. 11 Notably Gorgias 523a, Phaedo 61b, and Timaeus 26e.
208 FRITZ-GREGOR HERRMANN lowed by and coupled with the question about his dynamis, his power.12 This evokes the Socratic distinction between ‘what something is’, which must be known first, and ‘of what sort something is’/‘what something is like’/‘what something is capable of’, which must come second; this distinction, reflected also in the Charmides passage adduced above, is made for example in the Meno, where the terminological distinction is that between ti (‘what?’) and hoion (‘of what sort?’).13 But Plato is not bound by this terminology; in the Symposium, the subject under discussion is Erōs; after a number of speeches in praise of the god, it is the turn of the tragic poet Agathon; he introduces the distinction between on the one hand ‘congratulating humans on the goods the god is responsible for giving them’ and on the other declaring and explaining ‘in virtue of having what sort of character he gave them’, i.e. ‘describ[ing] in speech what sort of character whoever is the subject of the speech has in virtue of which he is actually responsible for what’.14 Socrates picks up this distinction of Agathon’s15 when he, after criticism of Agathon’s method, introduces his own speech:
Well now, my dear Agathon: you seemed to me to make a good start to your speech, when you said that one should first of all display the sort of character Love himself has (ἐπιδεῖξαι ὁποῖόϛ τίϛ ἐστιν ὁ Ἔρωϛ), and then go on to what he does (ὕστερον δὲ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ).16
The doctor Eryximachus spoke of the power, the dynamis, of Erōs at 188d; that was taken up by the character Aristophanes at 189c–d; and, once the parentage of Erōs has been recounted, Socrates’ own question to the priest- ess Diotima, who is instructing him, is (202e): ‘having what power (tina ... dynamin echon), does the god do what he does?’ Daphnis and Chloe’s ques- tion of what the ‘power’ of Erōs is is as much an echo of Symposium 202e as the previous question of whether Erōs is a child or a bird is a non-serious ————— 12 If there is this philosophical subtext to this part of Longus’ novel, one should probably best think in terms of a singular dynamis, even if, in the event, the god is capable of do- ing many things; pace Morgan 2004, 57, who uses the plural ‘powers’. 13 Pl. Men. 71b–c. 14 Translations from Rowe 1998, 61. 15 This opens up the possibility that Socrates would, left to his own devices, have made the threefold distinction of (1) what something is, (2) of what sort something is, and (3) what its function and/or power is; the fundamental philosophically-important contrast, how- ever, can be expressed, as the context requires, by opposing (1) and (2), as in the Meno; or by opposing (1) and (3), as in Longus; or by opposing (2) and (3), as in the Sympo- sium. Cf. also Gorgias 447c2 ff., esp. 462c10 ff. 16 Pl. Smp. 199c.
. LONGUS’ IMITATION 209 echo of Socrates’ question at Symposium 202d. There, once Diotima has shown him that he does not believe that Erōs is a god, he asks whether she perhaps thinks that Erōs is a mortal. That alternative is denied: Erōs, while sharing features of both, is neither god nor mortal; so in Longus, Erōs, while sharing features of both, is neither a boy nor a bird. There is thus a conspicu- ous nod to Plato beyond the content of the description of the god Erōs in Philetas’ speech, which itself owes as much to the Symposium as it does to Hellenistic poetry.17 Furthermore, the places in Plato which are evoked in particular, in the Protagoras, the Meno, and the Symposium,18 all have an educational aspect.19 In Longus, this is combined with reception of an aspect of what was perhaps in that era, together with the Symposium, the most widely read Platonic dialogue, the Phaedrus. In that dialogue, Socrates draws the distinction of what something is and what power it has with the phrase: ‘about love, what it is and what power it has’.20 As the subject of the speeches in the Phaedrus is love and how lovers should behave, this pas- sage, too, must be regarded as part of the backdrop to Longus. An example of (2) education by and through nature is found at the end of the Lycaenion episode. Forms of the stems didak- and paideu-, ‘teach’ and ‘educate’, abound, including erōtikē paidagōgia.21 While the knowing woman has to guide Daphnis initially with words and with her actions, there comes a point at which active instruction ceases, ‘for nature herself taught
————— 17 In this context, it is relevant that Philetas at 2,3,1 appears suddenly, is a presbys, an ‘elder’ (?), and wears distinctive clothing (cf. Morgan 2004, 177–178); the parallel to the appearance of Lycidas in Theocritus 7 is obvious, and Bowie 1985, 71–72 may well be right in seeing the poet Philetas behind Lycidas. The whole manner of the description of Lycidas, however, also specifically recalls the Socrates of the opening of Plato’s Sympo- sium, and if this is intended by Theocritus, it may have further repercussions for the in- terpretation of Idyll 7. While the case for this reading cannot be argued here, if Longus saw the allusion to the Socrates of the Symposium as well as to the poet Philetas, he will have doubly inverted the situation of Theocritus’ Idyll 7 by (re-)turning Lycidas (in)to Philetas and giving Philetas a speech which could be either that of the re-formed poet Philetas or that of a re-formed Socrates of Plato’s Symposium. 18 As regards Philetas’ story about Erōs, McCulloh 1970, 99 rightly draws attention also to Phdr. 251a–b. 19 On 1,8,1, see the Appendix. 20 Pl. Phdr. 237c8: περὶ ἔρωτος οἷόν τ’ἔστι καὶ ἣν ἔχει δύναμιν. 21 Longus 3,19,1. 22 3,18,4.
210 FRITZ-GREGOR HERRMANN height of pleasure to be got, resulted from a combination of nature and art.23 The question of whether it is instruction or nature that teaches the young, and the answer that education is a result of both, are old. One may think in particular of the opening lines of Plato’s Meno:
Meno: Can you tell me, Socrates, whether excellence (aretē) is some- thing taught (didakton)? Or not taught but practised (askēton)? Or nei- ther taught nor learned
One is reminded that the sophist Protagoras, much of whose thinking is be- hind the dialogues Protagoras and Meno, already had declared: ‘Teaching requires nature (physis) and practice (askēsis)’ and ‘It is necessary to learn from early childhood onwards’.26 Given the general nature of these observa- tions, it is hardly necessary to claim that there is a direct link between Longus and the pre-Socratic Protagoras; but we have seen above that ac- quaintance with Plato can be presupposed and that it is by no means impos- sible that Longus had read, among other dialogues, the Meno.
III
For an understanding of the third kind of education, (3) education through mimēsis, it is necessary to look at Longus’ use of the concept of mimēsis in general. To this end, we shall return to the beginning of the novel, as if read- ing it for the first time. The prologue of Daphnis and Chloe begins with a sentence of intriguing complexity:
In Lesbos hunting, in a grove of Nymphs, a sight I saw (theama eidon), most beautiful of those I have seen (eidon): a picture of an image (eiko- nos graphēn), a (hi)story of Love.27
————— 23 Cf. Morgan 2004, 14–15. 24 This is the connotation of μαθητόν before Plato redefines learning as anamnēsis (‘recol- lection’). 25 Pl. Men. 70a1–4. 26 DK 80B3. 27 Praef. 1.
. LONGUS’ IMITATION 211
This opening statement, like the prologue as a whole, is full of ambiguities.28 The phrase eikonos graphēn in particular has given rise to extensive discus- sion,29 and this is what we shall focus on here. The word graphē is taken up again a few lines later with ἡ γραφὴ τερπνοτέρα (‘the graphē was more de- lightful’), then in the phrase ἀντιγράψαι τῇ γραφῇ (‘respond in writing to the graphē), and finally with the verb γράφειν, which concludes the prologue. Eikōn as well recurs twice in the prologue, and another four times in all at
————— 28 Even if the question of ‘Whose voice are we hearing?’ is left aside: is the speaker hunting in Lesbos and seeing an image in a grove, or is he hunting in a grove in Lesbos? Is it a grove that belongs to Nymphs, or does he see a sight, spectacle, vision, or picture that is ‘of the Nymphs’, either by depicting Nymphs or by belonging to them? Is it a story or history about Erōs, or is it one told by Erōs, or one initiated by Erōs? These are, of course, not necessarily exclusive possibilities. The various ambiguities are achieved mostly by two simple means: word order and the fundamental openness of the genitive. Some of these ambiguities must be deliberate. Terrible things happen to those who hunt in sacred groves where they must not: are we dealing with a pious Hippolytus or a sacri- legious Actaeon? The Actaeon-motif is found, in semi-jocular variation, in the Dorcon episode (1,20–21), where the rival cowherd, covered in an animal skin, is spying on Chloe the nymph. But of Hippolytus we are reminded much sooner, when the prologue ends with the words: ‘To us, though, may the god grant to write (graphein) what has happened to others, while we ourselves remain moderate, modest, decent and chaste (sō- phronousi).’ This, as has been observed (cf. Morgan 2004, 150), echoes the prayer of the chorus in Euripides’ Hippolytus, a play in which everything centres around sōphrosynē; the opening lines of the prayer read (525–530): ‘Erōs, Erōs, who drips into the eyes de- sire, infusing with sweet longing the soul of those against whom you go to war: may you never appear to me with evil, nor may you arrive on the wrong foot.’ But even if the nar- rator in Longus remains sōphrōn, will the fate of the sōphrones mentioned by the chorus of the Hippolytus earlier catch up with him? ‘For the modest (sōphrones) do not will- ingly, but yet all the same, love what is bad’ (358–359). So, will there be more of this Orphico-Pythagorean drama of Euripides, and no Actaeon, in Daphnis and Chloe? Unless, of course, the previous sentence, the last but one of Longus’ prologue, is de- signed to remind us, however briefly, of an Actaean voyeurism (praef. 4): ‘For altogether nobody has escaped, or shall escape, Erōs, for as long as there is beauty and eyes see.’ For while the motif of ‘nobody escapes Erōs’ is an old and widespread one, this Erōs, as has been noted, is usually destructive. So both concluding sentences of the prologue con- tain within them at least the possibility of an unhappy ending, even though this poten- tially goes against the opening excitement of the speaker who remembers the most beau- tiful of sights, against the implied promise of a pleasant read, and potentially also against genre-conventions. We shall return to the role of sōphrosynē in the novel below. 29 εἰκόνοϛ γραφήν is widely accepted by modern editors; the well-attested variant manu- script-reading is εἰκόνα γραφήν, which was emended by Brunck to εἰκόνα γραπτήν, as such accepted by e.g. Thornley & Edmonds 1916, and translated as ‘a painted picture’; this emendation is certainly a possibility, but it would diminish the impact not least of praef. 3, which as an obvious echo establishes, prima facie, a contrast between γραφή and εἰκών.
212 FRITZ-GREGOR HERRMANN strategic places in the novel. Leaving aside the ambiguity exploited, a few lines later, of graphē as both a drawing and a description, which results in an identification of picture and script, how is the reader to understand eikonos graphēn, and how are we to translate the phrase? There are several possibili- ties: (1) Both eikōn and graphē could denote the physical object; the genitive would then be ‘descriptive’: ‘a picture of an image’ would construe in parallel to ‘a fine figure of a man’, where there is no ‘figure’ apart from the ‘man’: the ‘man’ is the ‘figure’. (2) graphē could refer more narrowly to a line-drawing and eikōn to the physical object which has been dedicated; the genitive would be, broadly speaking, possessive. (3) graphē could refer a) to the physical object, or b) to a line-drawing, while eikōn refers to that which is depicted, the content, in a somehow abstracted sense: ‘a drawing of a picture’ or ‘a drawing of an image’, where ‘picture’, or ‘image’, refers figuratively to a scene or set of scenes or sequence of events. This type of genitive is sometimes referred to as ‘genitive of quality’ or ‘genitive of material’.
It is difficult to determine the extent to which possible parallels to the ex- pression in earlier Greek literature can be of help for an understanding of the phrase in Longus. An early collocation of eikōn and graphē can be found in Herodotus:
Amasis further showed his goodwill to Greece by sending presents to be dedicated in Greek temples; to Cyrene he sent a gold-plated statue of Athene and a painting of himself (εἰκόνα ἑωυτοῦ γραφῇ εἰκασμένην), … and to the goddess Hera in Samos two likenesses of himself (εἰκόναϛ ἑωυτοῦ διφασίαϛ), in wood …30
While this translation glosses over the difficult expression that links eikōn and graphē, Alan Lloyd asks in his commentary: ‘What was the precise character of this object?’, and answers:
Eikōn may mean “statue” or “picture” (LSJ p. 485, b, I, 1) and it is cer- tainly used of statues infra. However, if it meant “statue” here, much of
————— 30 Hdt. 2,182; translated by de Sélincourt and Marincola 2003, 169.
. LONGUS’ IMITATION 213
the point of γραφῇ εἰκασμένην would surely be lost. The phrase, there- fore, probably means “painted portrait”.31
This would correspond to (2) above. Whatever the precise semantics of εἰκόνα ἑωυτοῦ γραφῇ εἰκασμένην, it seems at first glance fairly plausible that, in this context in Herodotus, eikōn refers to a physical object. Construed on this parallel, the phrase eikonos graphēn in Longus would mean ‘a picture of an eikōn’, in the sense of ‘a picture on a dedicatory object which was an eikōn, a votive offering’. This reading, one could argue, receives strong confirmation from a later passage in Longus, a passage that is also thematically connected with the prologue. At the end of the novel, when Daphnis’ and Chloe’s true identities have been established and they have been united in marriage, they return to the countryside to honour the place of their childhood and its gods:
And they adorned the cave and dedicated images (eikonas) and erected an altar of Erōs the Shepherd; and gave a temple to Pan, to live in, in- stead of his pine, calling him Pan the Soldier.32
Here, the term eikonas does refer to physical objects.33 There is a difference, though, in that what is mentioned in the prologue is a singular eikōn, whereas the dedication consists of plural eikones. This may be of relevance to the question of whether the eikōn of the prologue must, or even could possibly, refer to a physical object, or at least whether that is what the audi- ence would have associated with the word in the first place.
IV
While there is undoubtedly a connection between the dedication of eikones by Daphnis and Chloe and the graphē the narrator has set out to describe and explicate, another way of reading eikonos graphēn may ultimately be more
————— 31 Lloyd 1988, 236; the commentary on the second occurrence of εἰκών (Lloyd 1988, 238) does not throw additional light on the matter. 32 Longus 4,39,2. 33 I shall here leave aside the interesting question of the possible identity of these pictures with the image the narrator sets out to describe in the prologue; cf. Wouters 1989–1990, and for wider implications of the identity of the eikones for an understanding of the au- thor’s strategy, see Morgan 2004, 17–20, esp. 18.
214 FRITZ-GREGOR HERRMANN plausible. It has been suggested34 that an anonymous fourth-century poem may furnish the closest verbal parallel; in this poem, an epicedeion for a Professor of the university of Berytus, we read:
ἄλλωϛ γὰρ αὐτὸν οὐκ ἔχοντεϛ εἰσορᾶν ἔστησαν ἐν γραφαῖσιν εἰκόνων δύο, ὧν τὴν μὲν ἠργάσαντο παῖδεϛ ζωγράφων, ἣ δ’ ἦν ἐν ἑκάστῳ κατὰ φύσιν γεγραμμένη ἐν τῇ διανοίᾳ.35
But while there is indeed the collocation of γραφαῖσιν εἰκόνων, at this point γραφαῖσιν forms part of a prepositional expression, ἐν γραφαῖσιν, while εἰκόνων depends on the following δύο; one should construe:
For as they could not see him in another way, they erected in line-drawings ‘of images two’ [= two images],36 of which the sons of painters worked up one, but the other was in each one [= each one of them], drawn according to nature, in the mind.
Thus we do indeed learn something about the respective usage of both gra- phē and eikōn from this poem. Graphē is a drawing, be it a physical one in the reality of space and time, or a mental one, in the minds of the behold- ers.37 That the two eikones belong to different types of eikōn is of relevance. To begin with the eikōn or image in the mind: in the context of this poem, this ‘image in the mind’ is hardly a physical object. The eikōn in the mind is a mental image, an object of internal theōria, at best an abstraction, perhaps the mental content or the conception. The ontological status of such an im- age will depend on whatever one’s ontology of the world happens to be in general. For Empedocles, and perhaps for Democritus and his later follow- ers, these images were the vestiges of effluences that had physically sepa- ————— 34 Morgan 2004, 149, commentary ad loc.: ‘depiction of an image: the same phrase occurs in a 4th-century poem (Page GLP 138.15) which also plays on the ambiguity of γραφή (painting or writing)’. 35 Page, GLP 138,14–17. 36 In other words, ‘they put up two images in line-drawing’. 37 The metaphor of ‘the eye of the mind’ and related imagery are widespread. Note that, in the context of this poem, there does not seem to be any need to posit an ambiguity be- tween drawing (or painting) on the one hand and writing on the other.
. LONGUS’ IMITATION 215 rated off from the objects themselves, here from ‘the Professor’. For Aris- totle, the image might well have been something in the soul of the individ- ual, created by the soul in response to a physical stimulus. For a follower of Plato, the image may have had a reality of its own, perhaps one and the same underlying incorporeal reality for each of the pupils, something they all par- ticipated in when they came to have an image in their minds. For these Pla- tonists, however, the image of the professor drawn in this physical world would, in principle, have the same status and the same relation to that under- lying image of the professor as had the mental images: the image on wood or stone, a painting, a drawing, a relief or a statue would, as images, be the same as the image in the mind: the execution may be different, the colours, the material, the mode of manifested existence; but the content that is the eikōn would not change; it would be the same in all its manifestations.38 This is not a problem confined to Platonism. It is in the nature of an im- age to stand in a peculiar relation to the original depicted. Regardless of the ontology adopted, unless one is prepared to concede some relation between depiction and object depicted, it would be misleading – or perhaps simply wrong – to speak of an image in the first place. One way of looking at the matter is to say that the relation that obtains between an object depicted and the depiction of that object is that of semblance; where images of physical objects are at issue, the notion of homoiotēs (‘semblance’) is inherently plau- sible.39 Understood along those lines, ‘a drawing of an image’ could then be construed as in (3) above.40 These grammatical-cum-semantic considerations have wider implica- tions for an understanding of Longus. In connection with the possibility of an allegorical reading of a painting, and thus also of a text that purports to be an ekphrasis, Morgan comments: ‘Significantly the word used of the picture, εἰκών, can also mean “simile” or “symbol”’.41 If the phrase eikonos graphēn ————— 38 There may, of course, be different images of one and the same thing; conversely, physi- cal execution brings with it physical differences by necessity; but the differences are, po- tentially, only on the level of the particular painting, statue, mind, or brain, not of the im- age as such, the εἰκών, the content that is depicted. 39 On image and reality, cf. e.g. Patterson 1985, who (15; 185 n.11) adduces Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, sec. 50; cf. also Kahane (this volume). 40 There are three further instances of eikōn in Longus; in none of them does the term refer to a physical object: 1,11,2, discussed in Section V below; 2,11,2, where Daphnis and Chloe, having fallen to the ground, see in their position ‘the image of their dreams’; and 4,5,2, where the country-folk prepare for their master, who is visiting from the city, country-life ‘in an image’, where that expression comes close to meaning ‘as imagined’, viz. by the city-dwellers. 41 Morgan 2004, 146.
216 FRITZ-GREGOR HERRMANN is construed as suggested in (3) above, one could thus understand ‘a drawing of an image’ as ‘a drawing of a simile’. While the former is neutral as to the truth-value of the story, the latter may indeed suggest, without change of grammatical construction, that the status of the subsequent ekphrasis that is based on the ‘simile’ is that of an allegory. A decision on whether eikōn in the prologue refers to a physical object or the content that is an image will thus to some extent determine how we ap- proach the rest of the narrative. It may therefore be pointed out in addition that eikōn in the opening sentence of the novel is in apposition to theama (‘sight’), which is similarly ambiguous, and historia (‘[hi]story’), which strongly points to something non-corporeal. But unlike either of the two words flanking it, eikōn conjures up a set of specific philosophical ideas, through its not infrequent collocation with mimēma, mimēsis, and their cog- nates.
V
That this is so for Longus can be seen from the following passage. Daphnis and Chloe are inseparable in their innocence, but Erōs, as part of a plan de- signed to kindle in them love for each other, sends a wolf that decimates the flocks. The farmers dig deep pits to trap the beast:
Most of the loose earth they carted away and scattered, then they laid long, dry sticks across the hole and spread the rest of the loose earth on top to make it look like the ground did before (τῆϛ πρότερον γῆϛ εἰκόνα = an image of the ground
Here we have a clear instance of an eikōn that is a mimēma, an image that is an imitation. But Longus is, of course, not the first to make this connection. The first significant context in which there is a functional connection be- tween the notions of eikōn and mimēsis, image and imitation, is the passage at the end of Bk. 6 of Plato’s Republic which is conventionally labelled the ‘simile of the line’,43 an epistemological passage in which everything in the ————— 42 Longus 1,11,2; translation Morgan 2004, 29; my additions. 43 Pl. R. 509d1–511d2.
. LONGUS’ IMITATION 217 world, corporeal or non-corporeal, is correlated to one of four types of cog- nition, from non-rational belief to certain and secure knowledge: all things in the world are part of a hierarchy, in which what is immutable and never changing is at the top, as accessible to, and the object of, thought and knowl- edge; Socrates labels that realm ‘what is thinkable’. What is most liable to change and alteration, accessible to the senses and, as a shorthand, labelled ‘what is visible’, is at the bottom. Within each of the two realms, there is one further cut, resulting in a fourfold division, a line with four segments, two corresponding to the visible world, and two corresponding to what can be thought. Socrates explains:
Now, in terms of relative clarity and obscurity, you’ll have one segment in the visible part for images (eikonōn). I mean by images (eikonas) first shadows, then appearances produced in water … Then in the other seg- ment [of the visible part] put that of which this first is the likeness (ᾧ τοῦτο ἔοικεν) – the animals around us and everything that grows, and the whole class of artifacts. … [And] with respect to truth or lack of it, as the opinable is distinguished from the knowable, so the likeness is distin- guished from that of which it is the likeness (τὸ ὁμοιωθὲν πρὸϛ τὸ ᾧ ὡμοιώθη) … Now, in its turn, consider how the intelligible section should be cut … In one part of the soul, using as images (hōs eikosi) the things that were previously imitated, it is compelled to investigate on the basis of hypotheses and makes its way not to a beginning but to an end; while in the other part it makes its way to a beginning that is free from hypotheses; starting out from hypothesis and without the images (eiko- nōn) used in the other part, by means of forms themselves it makes its inquiry through them. [For example, geometers use hypotheses which they do not question in their investigations …] Don’t you also know that they use visible forms besides and make their arguments about them, not thinking about them but about those others that they are like (ἀλλ’ ἐκείνων πέρι οἷϛ ταῦτα ἔοικε)? They make the arguments for the sake of the square itself and the diagonal itself, not for the sake of the diagonal they draw (ἀλλ’ οὐ ταύτηϛ ἣν γράφουσι), and likewise with the rest. These things themselves that they mold and draw (ἃ πλάττουσί τε καὶ γράφουσιν), of which there are shadows and images (eikones) in water, they now use as images (hōs eikosin), seeking to see those things them- selves, that one can see in no other way than with thought … Well, then, this is the form I said was intelligible. However, a soul in investigating it is compelled to use hypotheses, and does not go to a beginning because
218 FRITZ-GREGOR HERRMANN
it is unable to step out above the hypotheses. And it uses as images (εἰκόσι) those very things of which images are made by the things below (τοῖϛ ὑπὸ τῶν κάτω ἀπεικασθεῖσι), and in comparison with which they are opined to be clear (ὡϛ ἐναργέσι) and are given honour.44
Without discussing all the ontological and epistemological implications of this passage, one can extrapolate the two contexts in which eikones, or im- ages, occur. Shadows and reflections in water or polished surfaces are im- ages in the natural world; they are images of the things they reflect. A figure drawn by a geometer is an image of what he is really concerned with, the mathematical reality. The further suggestion is that there is something above the mathematical reality, of which the mathematical reality is an image. There are thus four types of thing in the world, hierarchically structured; and in some way, things on the lowest, fourth level are images of things of the third level; things of the third level are images of things of the second level; and things of the second level are images of what is on the highest level. In the case of reflections on the lowest level, the relation is one of homoiotēs (‘similarity’ or ‘semblance’); metaphorically, this relation is also claimed for the higher levels. Connected with this hierarchy is a claim concerning truth and reality. Just as the man who casts a shadow has a different reality and permanence from that of the shadow, the triangle of which the geometer thinks and speaks has a different reality and permanence from that which he draws in the sand. What is on the first and second level has more perma- nence, reality, and truth than what is on the third and fourth. This has direct implications for a theory of art and literature, prepared in Republic Bks. 2–3 and expounded in Bk. 10. If a work of art, like a reflec- tion in water or in a mirror, looks at and reflects the world of physical ob- jects and corporeal things, it is even further removed from the truth than these physical things. By implication, if what is taken as the model of a liter- ary creation is not the actual things and the actual human beings and their actions and passions, but if a literary creation looks at the two highest levels of reality, there is at least the possibility that what is portrayed in literature is truer and more real than life. Such stories, which are eikones, images, of another sort, can be educational, and in turn serve as objects of mimēsis, things to be imitated.45 There is thus, from Plato onwards, an ambiguity in-
————— 44 Pl. R. 509d8 ff.; translation Bloom 1991, 190–191. 45 Plato himself saw this as problematic. In the Phaedrus, a dialogue written after the Re- public, Socrates warns Phaedrus not to apply allegorical readings to traditional myths and stories (229b–230a). The reason for this is that Phaedrus would be faced with having to
. LONGUS’ IMITATION 219 herent in the notion of eikōn. But while it may not always be obvious whether what is imitated is just the external world (which would render the image inferior to real life and therefore potentially also less true), or whether it is a higher reality (which would make the imitation worth imitating), eikōn as a literary and art-theoretical term from Plato’s Republic onwards points to something of which it is an imitation, a mimēma.46 The only opposition to the view of poetry and literature as mimēsis, of which the view of eikones as mimēmata is a part, stems from Epicureanism, represented by its populariser in the Roman world of the first century B.C., Philodemus, the theoretician, lewd epigrammatist, and teacher, in the wider sense, of, among others, Virgil and especially Horace. In writing against Diogenes of Babylon, the second century B.C. head of the Stoa, Philodemus declares explicitly that ‘music is not mimetic’ and does not display or con- tain mimetic semblances of characters.47 Otherwise, it seems that by the time of Plutarch, Pausanias, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and Origen (the first- and second-century authors who can be cited as direct evidence for the wide- spread nature of this connection), the view of an eikōn as a mimēma – while it may still have been regarded as a philosophical notion in the wider sense – is no longer bound up with any particular philosophical school, but has en- tered the conceptual vocabulary of the generally educated reader. Pausanias, for example, is not making a philosophical point when he describes a statue as ‘of Auge an image produced in the medium of painting’.48 While he em- ploys the words we have encountered in Longus in a grammatical construc- tion that is materially equivalent to eikonos graphēn, Pausanias is here using ————— allegorise the whole body of inherited myths; this would be an impossible task, both be- cause of the vast amount of stories and in particular because of their fantastic nature. As such, Socrates’ criticism is thus not at all concerned with the type of myth whose creation is advocated as useful in the Republic; that is to say, Plato does not say that his own myths and stories cannot be allegorised. And this is indeed how later generations, and in particular the Neoplatonists, interpreted Plato. 46 Significant passages in which eikōn and the notion of mimēsis are linked in the context of artistic or literary production are e.g. Pl. Sph. 241e; Arist. Po. 1460b9; Thphr. On piety 13,12–15 (Porph. Abst. 2,26); Plu. Isis 377a3; Paus. 8,47,2; Alex. Aphr. In Metaph. 277,24; id. In Top. 427,1; Origen (Fragments) On the Gospel of John 6,10. While the view of images as ‘imitations’, ‘representations’, or, as Stephen Halliwell suggests, ‘ex- pressions’, may have entered the historical horizon with Plato, it is not impossible that one branch at least of fifth-century Pythagoreanism had a theory of mimēsis which in its logical consequences would have anticipated Plato; this cannot be determined with cer- tainty, but even if it were so, the idea of an image as an imitation became as fruitful and widespread as it did through and because of Plato. 47 Phld. Mus. 4, p.65 Kemke; discussion in Halliwell 2002, esp. 249–259. 48 Paus. 8,47,2: Αὔγης εἰκὼν γραφῇ μεμιμημένη.
220 FRITZ-GREGOR HERRMANN phraseology that has established itself as part of the common language. But the reason these terms are now part of the common language of the educated is precisely that the notion of mimēsis, as employed by Plato, has become part of a standard way of thinking.
VI
The reader of Longus’ opening sentence can thus read the phrase eikonos graphēn as pointing to a simple depiction, on the fourth level of reality, of a thing, a person or persons, or also as a mimetic reflection, on the third level of reality, of a higher truth that can be obtained only by interpretation. Longus’ own use of the language of mimēsis will in part determine the extent to which one will opt for, or oscillate between, the different modes of read- ing the novel. There are in all 15 instances of forms of μιμεῖσθαι and μίμησιϛ in Daphnis and Chloe, distributed over ten contexts.49 Imitation of nature is prominent, in different ways, at 1,3,1; 1,9,1–10,1 and 3,14,5. Musical-cum- theatrical imitation is the topic of the extensive passages 2,35,3–37,3 and 3,23,4–5. To this should be added 4,15,2–4, the mock-theatre created ad hoc on the meadow so that Daphnis can display his musical skills by command- ing the goats with his piping. The language of mimēsis is absent there, but, as has been noted, it must be seen together with 2,35–2,37, as Daphnis has learned this skill, as he has learned the telling of mythoi, from Philetas.50 There is a certain tension between these two sets of mimetic behaviour, between the straightforward copying of individual features of the natural world and the structured, musical mimēsis. The differences are grounded in the differences between the underlying philosophical issues. The behaviour Daphnis and Chloe display at 1,9,1 is ultimately modelled on a famous pas- sage from Democritus.51 Democritus explains the origin of music as an imi- tating or copying of the song of birds: the fact that men sing can be ascribed to their imitation of nature. Democritus’ examples are: we have learnt weav- ————— 49 1,3,1; 1,9,1–10,1; 1,11,2; 2,25,3–4; 2,35,3–37,3; 3,14,5; 3,16,1; 3,21,4; 3,23,4–5; 4,2,3– 5; 4,17,3–6. 50 Cf. Morgan 2004, 233. One should also compare Lucian Salt., esp. 70; there, a mimetic ‘Theory of Dance’ is developed, avowedly in conscious contradistinction to Plato’s the- ory of the arts, employing in mock-serious fashion the conceptual approaches of Plato and thus bearing witness to the popularity of such notions (since for the parody to be ef- fective, not only the author, but also the intended reader must be aware of the philosophi- cal theory that is parodied). I owe this reference to Ian Repath. 51 DK 68 B 154.
. LONGUS’ IMITATION 221 ing from spiders, house-building from swallows, singing from the songbirds, swan, and nightingale, by way of mimēsis. It is impossible to ascertain De- mocritus’ degree of seriousness at this point; Longus is hardly entirely seri- ous when he extends this kind of mimēsis to frolicking and jumping about like lambs and kids, gathering flowers like bees – though it may be signifi- cant that bees do not gather flowers – and, at 3,14,5, mounting one another like goats on a meadow, an attempt that must be abortive. Longus ironises this type of mimēsis that is directed solely towards imitating and representing outward appearance. This type of imitation cannot result in adequate educa- tion. The content – and that also entails the true meaning – of Erōs cannot be captured by a mimēsis of outward features which are only an external mani- festation of something else. It is in this light that one must see the first in- stance of mimēsis at 1,3,1: it is ironic, in that the farmer imitates the ‘philan- thropy’ of the goat;52 but animal instincts are not on a par with human emotions and human thought. Only a fictional goat may be philanthropic, and only a fictional farmer could learn his philanthropy and humanity from a goat. Again, at 1,9,2, the flower-gathering of Daphnis and Chloe may re- semble the honey-gathering of the bees; but the dedication of the wreaths to the nymphs has no analogue in the animal world: the act of worship is exclu- sively human, and the Democritean imitation of nature cannot sufficiently explain it. But this limitation of the explanatory function of mimēsis can be over- come if mimēsis is not seen as restricted to physical acts and the copying of outward manifestations of behaviour. The passages 2,35,3–37,3 and 3,23,4– 5, together with 4,15,2–4, exemplify such an anti-behaviourist model of mimēsis. Largely circumstantial evidence suggests that that model goes back to the fifth-century-B.C. musician Damon, allegedly the teacher of Socrates. Damon invented, or at least introduced to the study of music, a theory of ēthē, or ‘characters’.53 It is this ‘ethical’ theory of music in particular which was rejected by Philodemus.54 Character traits, or characteristics, like the magnanimous versus the mean, the manly versus the unmanly, the orderly and decent versus the bold and rough, had all been said by the Stoic Dio- genes of Babylon to be somehow in the music. This same view also finds expression, perhaps not in all earnestness, in the construct of Plato’s Repub- lic which, invoking Damon, envisages a society in which only certain modes
————— 52 Cf. Morgan 2004, 152. 53 Cf. discussion by Halliwell 2002, esp. 238–240. 54 See n. 47 above.
222 FRITZ-GREGOR HERRMANN of music are allowed, as stirring up the right sorts of characteristics within the soul of the human individual, while all the rest are banned.55 Ultimately, that is the view which Longus, too, employs. It is the charac- ter of the music of Philetas in this technical sense which at 2,35,4 is labelled as sweet, loud and piercing. As befits the setting, these are, of course, simple characteristics. 3,23 holds an intermediate position, as it is not explained how the sounds of Echo the nymph represented or expressed gods, men, tools, or rather musical instruments, and wild animals; it may have been primitive mimicking of sound. By contrast, Daphnis’ display of giving musi- cal orders to his goats at 4,15 outdoes even Philetas’ previous accomplish- ments, and in this way Daphnis becomes Philetas’ worthy successor: he has learned not by imitating the movements of the teacher but by understanding what is behind the performance of his music. Daphnis’ music touches the souls of the animals in a way that communicates particular types of behav- iour. In the context of the novel, this is not explained by way of stimulus- response to an internalised signal, in the way Pavlov’s dog responds to the sound of a bell as if it really meant the presence of food.56 Rather, as is also the case with the description of Philetas’ piping, Daphnis has mastered the character of sound and rhythm. Daphnis has learnt what he has learnt here by taking Philetas as a model. Mastering mimēsis is itself an act of mimēsis at another level. In a jocular fashion, this is expressed by Gnathon, when he invokes Zeus’ dealings with Ganymedes as his model for pursuing Daphnis: ‘I have imitated the gods’ plays on notions of the imitation of and approximation to god which was the ultimate aim of the Neoplatonist philosopher.57 The serious side of this imi- tation, representation, and expression, though, is that learning characterised as mimēsis is only possible precisely because what is really imitated is the underlying character traits and not the outward behaviour. Mimēsis in music and mimēsis elsewhere in education are conceptually identical.
VII
What does this mean for a reading of Longus, who is clearly operating within this conceptual framework? Was he writing in a tradition of shared cultural assumptions, or did he give specific, and that is to say conscious, ————— 55 Pl. R. 3,398c–402c. 56 Even 4,15,3 cannot adequately be explained in Pavlovian fashion. 57 Longus 4,17,3–6: θεοὺς ἐμιμησάμην.
. LONGUS’ IMITATION 223 thought to these questions of education? In a novel about education, one must reckon with either possibility. But before we attempt an answer, it is worth considering the closing lines of the novel in the same way we sub- jected the opening lines to scrutiny. The last sentence ends with the words:
… and then Chloe for the first time learnt that what had happened at the wood was shepherds’ games (poimenōn paignia).58
In the first place, this refers to the completion of Chloe’s erotic education. But the end of her education is also the end of the book, and what Daphnis and Chloe have done is the story that has come to a conclusion. The very last word, paignia, has been commented on extensively.59 Games or playful ac- tivity contrast with the earnestness of real life which Chloe enters at that point. In this way, the word paignia encompasses everything Daphnis and Chloe have done together, the whole story of Daphnis and Chloe which has just been told and heard or read. Just as, for Chloe, youth now appears as shepherds’ games, on which she can look back, so it is also true that paignia is the last word for the reader. As in the novel of Achilles Tatius, and as in many a Platonic dialogue, the carefully constructed multi-layered setting is not resumed, the ring is not closed. But this is only ostensibly so, as the last words of the narrator are indeed the last words of the author, and thereby the author’s final statement, the label with which he seals his goods. Longus characterises Daphnis and Chloe, the story, the book, as paignia, games or play. A connection has been seen between the ending of the novel and the final words of the playful work of another great sophist, Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen,60 which closes:
I wanted to write this treatise as Helen’s praise, but as my entertainment (emon ... paignion).61
But the parallel may be more apparent than real. The introduction of the personal pronoun at this stage does not signify that Gorgias is speaking as the author; that the personal pronoun qualifies paignion in the singular, may: emon ... paignion very much suggests that the text presented the author’s toy or plaything, his product whose purpose is to entertain him. A parallel to this
————— 58 Longus 4,40,3. 59 Cf. Morgan 2004, 249. 60 Cf. e.g. Zeitlin 1990, 425 with n. 23. 61 Gorg. Hel. 11,131–132.
224 FRITZ-GREGOR HERRMANN attitude towards one’s own creation may be what Zeno, the pupil of Par- menides, says in Plato’s Parmenides about his treatise, that he wrote it for himself, and that publication followed an act of theft.62 But Longus’ novel is not a plaything in that sense: poimenōn paignia are games and frolicking by shepherds only from the perspective of Chloe. From the author’s – and from the reader’s – perspective, poimenōn paignia are paignia about or concerning shepherds: the genitive is no longer subjective. But this excludes a Gorgianic reading; the genitive precludes a meaning ‘entertainment, plaything’ for paignia. Another sense of poimenōn paignia is explored by Morgan:
shepherds’ games: the text ends with a self-referential sphragis. Paignion (“game”) is a literary term; it was the title of poems by Philitas and was used of Theokr. (Ael. Nat. Anim. 15.19). In a final conceit the “shepherds’ games” are identified with the “pastoral paignion” which gives them their existence, namely L[ongus]’ novel. Such self- deprecation, widespread in ostensibly erotic poetry, again keys L[ongus] into the fundamentals of Alexandrian poetics. Within the text, the phrase takes us back to the childish pastoral games of 1.10.2. L[ongus]’ pastoral world is the magic land of childhood innocence.63
There cannot be any doubt that this meaning of paignion is intended here. Poimenōn paignia is thus ambiguous, depending on the level on which it operates. The word-play can be taken further. Paignion occurs in later au- thors together with mimēsis. Both Socrates Scholasticus and Photius talk about religious plays which they label paignia.64 These plays are said by them to be mimēseis of holy or sacred events. This is to say, just as an eikōn, an image, is the product of mimēsis and, as a mimēma, conveys to the mind and soul of the beholder something of and from the original, so a paignion is, or at least can be, a mimēsis. Longus’ novel is bracketed by eikōn and paignion as by a frame. The novel is a mimēma as an eikōn, and a mimēsis as a paignion. This could, of course, by the time of the Second Sophistic, de- note merely that we are dealing with fiction: the author speaks self- referentially about his work as a work of literature. But while there are widely differing concepts of mimēsis, employing a fairly uniform mimetic surface vocabulary, which can be a superstructure based on widely differing ————— 62 Pl. Prm. 128b–e. 63 Morgan 2004, 249. 64 Socr. Schol. Hist. Eccl. 1,15,6; Phot. Bibl. 477b32.
. LONGUS’ IMITATION 225 ontological substructures; and while it may be that Longus is just talking about the fictionality of his pastoral, there remains the possibility that Longus favours in his novel a model of mimēsis that allows for an interpreta- tion in terms of Damonian affect-theory: mimēsis forms character. That seems to suggest that the model-character of the novel goes beyond the mere convention of the praeceptor amoris: Longus points the reader to a different reality of which the novel is an image.
VIII
I shall close with a tentative suggestion concerning the nature of the underly- ing reality of that image. As we have seen,65 the prologue ends with the words:
To us, though, may the god grant to write (graphein) what has happened to others, while we ourselves remain moderate, modest, decent and chaste (sōphronousi).
This prayer can be understood as a self-contained traditional feature, compa- rable to invocations of the Muses or other gods before a great endeavour. There is thus no need to ask in what ways, if any, the prayer has been ful- filled by the end of the novel; in fact, one should not expect Longus to return to the content of this prayer, other than by narrating a story which, in some way, deals with chastity and the potential of temptation. The prayer thus entails a promise that is amply fulfilled. But the narrator’s remark may have been programmatic in another way, too. The story he narrates is carefully structured. It begins with the exposure of the two children, first Daphnis, then Chloe, and it ends with their recognition, first Daphnis’ then Chloe’s.66 The adventures of the two are framed by these scenes. The beginning of the end of the story is thus the recognition of Daphnis in the middle of Bk. 4. It is Dionysophanes who recognises the tokens; he calls his wife Cleariste, and she recalls the event of Daphnis’ exposure:
“Dear Fates. Aren’t these the things we abandoned with our own baby? Wasn’t it to this farm that we sent Sophrone to take him? These are the
————— 65 See n. 28 above. 66 Cf. Morgan 2004, 237.
226 FRITZ-GREGOR HERRMANN
very ones, none other! Dear husband, it is our baby! Daphnis is our son, and he was looking after his father’s goats!”67
The servant woman’s name is Sophrone. Morgan comments:
Sophrone: the name of the nurses in Menandros’ Epitrepontes, and Terence’s Eunuch and Phormio; the MSS, however, call her Sophrosyne (“Chastity”), which occurs as the name of a nurse in a letter of Aristaine- tos (1.6), a writer who draws on New Comedy for his fictitious epistles.68
Thus, the servant woman’s name was Sophrosyne. Courier was mistaken to emend, and subsequent editors were mistaken to accept his emendation. Dionysophanes sends Sophrosyne to the countryside to leave Daphnis to his fate. But Daphnis’ fate is the novel, the adventures that constitute the story between exposure and recognition. Other novels differ from Longus’ in that the couple’s adventures consist of travels, in the case of Chariton, Xeno- phon, and Achilles Tatius accompanied by involuntary separation. But in all novels, chastity is an issue: the author sends the hero and heroine into the world where the reader can observe their sōphrosynē. Longus, the father of his novel, sends Sophrosyne to the country to expose Daphnis. When the narrator finishes his prologue with a prayer that the god may grant him to be sōphrōn in writing things that pertain to others, he knows that he will write about tests of ‘chastity’, the post-classical re-interpretation of the virtue of sōphrosynē, one of the four cardinal Platonic virtues, according to Plato’s Republic the first one acquired in childhood, and the one that is, according to Socrates, unlike andreia and sophia, attainable by all. Sōphrosynē is the first aim of education, and it is acquired in childhood through mimēsis of stories well told, stories that are themselves the product of mimēsis of the right sort of thing (Republic 2–3). This is the education of Daphnis and Chloe. Longus is no philosopher, and Daphnis and Chloe no work of philoso- phical fiction. But, in a way very different from Achilles Tatius, Longus is not only an educated Greek of the second century; he is also a reader of, among many works of poetic fiction, the prose fictions of Plato. Longus read Plato as a source for his educational ideas, and one layer, at least, of the novel is a skilful adaptation of that reading.
————— 67 Longus 4,21,3; translation Morgan 2004, 129. 68 Morgan 2004, 238.
. LONGUS’ IMITATION 227
Appendix: the early education of Daphnis and Chloe at 1,8,1
In Section II above, three types of education were distinguished, (1) educa- tion by instruction, (2) education by and through nature, and (3) education through mimēsis. Another example of (1) education by instruction could be the earliest instance of an act of education mentioned in the novel as a whole, 1,8,1. Daphnis and Chloe are 15 and 13 years of age respectively, and their foster fathers Dryas and Lamon have had an identical dream, in which Erōs, as yet unnamed by either the dreamers or the narrator, but sufficiently described for an unambiguous identification by the reader, wounds the chil- dren with his arrow and commands that Daphnis become a goatherd and Chloe a shepherdess. We are then told that Dryas and Lamon, in light of the tokens found with the babies, had hoped for something better for them,
δι’ ἣν αὐτοὺς καὶ τροφαῖς ἔτρεφον ἁβροτέραις καὶ γράμματα ἐπαίδευον καὶ πάντα ὅσα καλὰ ἦν ἐπ’ ἀγροικίας. ... and because of that they had given the two children a more delicate upbringing than their station required, and taught them their letters and whatever other refinements a peasant could aspire to.69
There is understandable unease among commentators, and few are content with Schönberger’s comment that Daphnis and Chloe also acquire ‘städ- tische Kultur’, from which he concludes that there must thus have been teachers in the countryside.70 Morgan rightly sides with those who brand this passage unrealistic and offers as a solution that it:
i) facilitates their integration into the urban world of their real families; ii) more important, assimilates them to the reader, by definition literate and leisured. The narrator’s view of the countryside is thoroughly ur- ban.71
But are this integration and this assimilation necessary? Apart from the ques- tion of whether Longus returns to the issue of literacy in any context, do we require this particular feature of realism in a story full of fantastic incidents
————— 69 Trans. McCail 2002, 7; Morgan 2004, 156 translates this last clause: ‘for which reason they had been giving them a more refined upbringing, teaching them to read and write, and whatever graces were to be found in the countryside’. 70 Schönberger 1989, 178. 71 Morgan 2004, 156.
228 FRITZ-GREGOR HERRMANN and events, in which we are constantly asked implicitly to suspend our disbe- lief? It may be noted that in the 23 other instances of the noun τροφή and the 15 other instances of the verb τρέφω in Longus, the reference is unambigu- ously the ‘rearing’, in contradistinction to the ‘education’, of humans or animals; as seen at 2,8,1, cited in the text above, words for education are taken by preference from the stem παιδευ-, of which there are 6 instances in the novel (the 15 instances of forms of the stem διδακ- occupy, in confor- mity with Greek usage otherwise, a middle-ground). There is a direct con- trast between τρέφω and παιδεύω in the story of Echo which Daphnis re- counts to Chloe (3,23,2):
‘She was nursed (reared: τρέφεται) by the Nymphs, and taught (edu- cated: παιδεύεται) by the Muses to play the pipes and the flute, tunes to be accompanied by the lyre and tunes to be accompanied by the harp, every kind of song’.72
τρέφω is a Leitmotif from the prologue (praef. 2) onwards, and consistently refers to looking after the body, not to the education of the mind and soul. It is thus – especially also in light of the use of ἀγροικία at 1,7,1; 1,13,5; 3,15,1; and 4, 19,1 – at least possible that the refined education which Daph- nis and Chloe had received in their early years was left unspecified, and that the relative clause at 1,8,1, from δι’ ἣν to ἐπ’ ἀγροικίαϛ, is an interpolation.
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————— 72 Longus 3,23,2; translation Morgan 2004, 101; my additions.
. LONGUS’ IMITATION 229
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